"Cook, Glen - The Black Company 04 - The Silver Spike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Something stared back at him from fifty feet away. It had a head the size of a bushel basket. Its eyes and teeth shown in the tree light. Especially its teeth. Never had he seen so many sharp teeth, or so big.

It started toward him.

His feet would not move.

He looked around wildly, saw Tully and Timmy headed away from the tree at a dead run.

He looked forward again as the monster began its leap, its jaws opening to snap at his head. He hurled himself backward. As the monster arced after him a blue bolt from the tree smacked it aside as a man's hand swats a flying insect.

Smeds landed hard, but hard did not slow him a step. He took off running and never looked back.

"I saw it, too," Old Man Fish said, and that put the quietus on Tully trying to make like Smeds was imagining things. "Like he said, it was as big as a house. Like a giant three-legged dog. The tree zapped it. It ran away."

"Three-legged dog? Come on. What was it doing?"

Smeds said, "It was trying to dig something up. It was sniffing and pawing the ground just like a dog trying to dig up a bone."

"Damn it to hell! Complications. Why does there always have to be complications? That for sure means it'll take longer than I thought. But we don't got no time to waste. Sooner or later somebody else is going to get the same idea I did."

"Don't get in no hurry," Fish said. "Take your time and do it right. That is, if you want to live long enough to enjoy being rich."

Tully grunted. Nobody suggested they give it up. Not even Smeds, who had felt the monster's breath on his face.

"Toadkiller Dog," Timmy Locan said.

"Say what?" Tully snapped back.

"Toadkiller Dog. There was a monster in the fight up here called Toadkiller Dog."

"Toadkiller Dog? What the hell kind of name is that?"

"How the hell should I know? He ain't my pup."

Stupid joke, but everybody laughed anyway. They needed to.





VI



Raven hardly sobered up for three weeks. One night I came back to our place, I'd had enough. I'd had to hurt a man bad that day, a nut who earned it trying to grab my boss's kids. Even so I felt bad. Somehow I worked it out that it was all Raven's fault I got in a position where I had to hurt somebody.

He was drunk on his ass. "Look at you, sucking on a wineskin like it was your mother's tit. The great and famous tough guy Raven, so bad he offed his old lady in the public gardens at Opal. So bad he went head-to-head with the Limper. Laying around feeling sorry for himself and whining like a three-year-old with a bellyache. Get up and do something with yourself, man. I'm sick of seeing you like this."

In a stumbling, slurred voice he told me to get stuffed, it wasn't any of my damned business.